EV Grieve

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Australian Homemade is back open

As of yesterday. Following a short closure for "construction."

The fools! Don't they know who they're dealing with?

The organizers of the Red Bull Snowscrapers event have pumped out about 1,550 cubic yards of manmade snow for the 90-foot tall ramp. Uh-oh. Are they crazy? Hope they have good security!

Anyway, it's today and free and stuff.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Grub Street reports: The Holland is open

This is the kind of booze news that we can use.

Update: City Room pays a visit.

Previous Holland coverage on EV Grieve.

Day 3: The Blarney Stone is still closed

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning edition

New York Dolls made their uptown debut 36 years ago (This Ain't the Summer of Love, via Stupefaction)

Sucking Icicles (East of Bowery)

Ken has been checking out the Brooklyn Navy Yards (Greenwich Village Daily Photo)

Kirby has more on Great Jones Street (Colonnade Row)

Not cool: Pepsi replaces the Swayzzzzzzzze (BoweryBoogie)

Don't fuck with Central Park (Flaming Pablum)

More vanishing storefronts (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Rotten makes butter better (Hunterer-Gatherer)

The evilest empire: A Live Nation and TicketMaster merger? (Brooklyn Vegan)

Oscar Wilde bookstore closing (Runnin' Scared)

From a New York Times editorial: Lawrence Ferlinghetti once wrote that Coney Island is “where I first fell in love with unreality.” Today, a desolate reality has taken hold at the legendary amusement park. As rides close, bulldozers uproot land that once held delightfully sinister sideshows. The few rides left barely lure neighborhood children and nostalgic tourists.

Reason No. 3,587 why local TV news sucks: Sue Simmons' annual groundhog impression (YouTube)

Ugh: Another dive in danger

Grub Street has the awful news on a Brooklyn classic:

One of the city’s truly gritty watering holes, the Navy Yard Cocktail Lounge, may not have long for this world.

As Daniel Maurer notes, the bar’s building (along with three others) is for sale for $3 million.

[Photo by Daniel Maurer via New York]

The recession reaches Madison Avenue

Last Nov. 6, I did a post after walking on Madison Avenue in the 70s and 60s where all the really nice shops are.

Flashback!

And you know we didn't see one person shopping in any of these stores. Seriously. Post-election hangover perhaps? Or maybe the richies just don't shop in a light rain on weekday afternoons? Or maybe the economy is really fucked. Anyway, every store was the same: A handful of well-dressed employees standing around looking expectantly out the store windows.

So I wasn't surprised to read this in the Times today:

New York’s most elegant shopping corridor, the Gold Coast of Madison Avenue, from 57th Street to 72nd Street, is pockmarked with vacancies as retailers flee sky-high rents. More than two dozen retail spaces are on the market and are either empty now or about to be. Windows that once showcased hand-tooled leather suitcases are now plastered with for-rent signs.

“This is as bad as I’ve ever seen it,” said Alan Victor, a broker who has worked the street for more than four decades and who is an executive vice president of the Lansco Corporation.

Why people move away

I've noticed a few more people than usual moving from the neighborhood. (Perhaps there's a reason for so many more men with vans signs.) Given the drop in some rentals, maybe these people are just moving a few blocks away to a building with better deals. Or maybe they lost everything and have to go bunk with a relative. Or maybe they came here during the heady days of, say, 2005 and figured to become the next Carrie Bradshaw. (Or at least have the chance to sit on her stoop!) I wish I could go up to these people and conduct exit interviews. Why are you moving? What will you miss about the neighborhood? What are you glad to be leaving behind? I'm always curious about this.

Luckily, I came across a blog written by a young professional living on the LES. After one year here, she is moving to another undisclosed neighborhood. Almost in answer to my questions, she provided a list of things she will miss and not miss about her apartment and the LES. Among the items:

Things I will miss:
--The gym. I hope I can still force myself to go to the gym when it isn’t in my building!
--My stainless steel stove
--Dry cleaning in the building
--The statue of Vladimir Lenin on top of the Red Square building. I can see him from my bed so I wake up to him with his right arm in the air every single morning.

Things I will not miss:
--The girls who scream, “Where’s my boyfriend!?” at 4 a.m. while leaving the Lower East Side bars on any given day
--The symphony of honking on Houston Street that forces me to sleep with earplugs
--The fresh vomit that I sometimes step over while leaving for [work] on any given day
--The smell of pickles from Katz Deli that I am forced to inhale when walking home every day
--The fact that there is not a close enough Starbucks
--The mural of Kiss on the brick wall on the bar across from my apartment

I guess that says it all.